Deadly Appearances

235 Pages·2016·1.51 MB·English

by  Bowen Gail

ACCLAIM FOR GAIL BOWEN AND
THE JOANNE KILBOURN MYSTERIES
“Bowen is one of those rare, magical mystery writers readers love not
only for her suspense skills but for her stories’ elegance, sense of place
and true-to-life form.… A master of ramping up suspense”
–Ottawa Citizen
“Bowen can confidently place her series beside any other being produced
in North America.”
–Halifax Chronicle-Herald
“Gail Bowen’s Joanne Kilbourn mysteries are small works of elegance
that assume the reader of suspense is after more than blood and guts,
that she is looking for the meaning behind a life lived and a life taken.”
–Calgary Herald
“Bowen has a hard eye for the way human ambition can take advantage
of human gullibility.”
–Publishers Weekly
“Gail Bowen got the recipe right with her series on Joanne Kilbourn.”
–Vancouver Sun
“What works so well [is Bowen’s] sense of place – Regina comes to life –
and her ability to inhabit the everyday life of an interesting family with
wit and vigour.… Gail Bowen continues to be a fine mystery writer, with
a protagonist readers can invest in for the long run.”
–National Post
“Gail Bowen is one of Canada’s literary treasures.”
–Ottawa Citizen
OTHER JOANNE KILBOURN MYSTERIES
BY GAIL BOWEN
The Nesting Dolls
The Brutal Heart
The Endless Knot
The Last Good Day
The Glass Coffin
Burying Ariel
Verdict in Blood
A Killing Spring
A Colder Kind of Death
The Wandering Soul Murders
Murder at the Mendel (U.S. ed., Love and Murder)

Copyright © 1990 by Gail Bowen
First published by Douglas & McIntyre Ltd., 1990
First M&S paperback edition published 1996
This edition published 2011
All rights reserved. The use of any part of this publication reproduced, transmitted in any form or
by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise, or stored in a
retrieval system, without the prior written consent of the publisher – or, in case of photocopying
or other reprographic copying, a licence from the Canadian Copyright Licensing Agency – is an
infringement of the copyright law.
Library and Archives Canada Cataloguing in Publication
Bowen, Gail, 1942-
Deadly appearances : a Joanne Kilbourn mystery / Gail Bowen.
eISBN: 978-0-77101322-5
I. Title.
PS8553.O8995D43 2011 C813′.54 C2011-900299-X
We acknowledge the financial support of the Government of Canada through the Book Publishing
Industry Development Program and that of the Government of Ontario through the Ontario
Media Development Corporation’s Ontario Book Initiative. We further acknowledge the support
of the Canada Council for the Arts and the Ontario Arts Council for our publishing program.
Published simultaneously in the United States of America by
McClelland & Stewart Ltd., P.O. Box 1030, Plattsburgh, New York 12901
Library of Congress Control Number: 2011925596
Cover image: Braendon Young/Dreamstime.com
McClelland & Stewart Ltd.
75 Sherbourne Street
Toronto, Ontario
M5A 2P9
www.mcclelland.com
v3.1
To my mother-in-law,
Hazel Wren Bowen,
with love and gratitude
Contents
Cover
Other Books by This Author
Title Page
Copyright
Dedication
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Chapter 9
Chapter 10
Chapter 11
Chapter 12
Chapter 13
Chapter 14
Chapter 15
Chapter 16
Chapter 17
Chapter 18
Chapter 19
Chapter 20
Chapter 21
Chapter 22
About the Author
CHAPTER
1
For the first seconds after Andy’s body slumped onto the searing metal of
the truck bed, it seemed as if we were all encircled by a spell that froze
us in the terrible moment of his fall. Suspended in time, the political
people standing behind the stage, hands wrapped around plastic glasses
of warm beer, kept talking politics. Craig and Julie Evanson, the perfect
political couple, safely out of public view, were drinking wine coolers
from bottles. Andy’s family and friends, awkward at finding themselves
so publicly in the place of honour, kept sitting, small smiles in place, on
the folding chairs that lined the back of the stage. The people out front
kept looking expectantly at the empty space behind the podium.
Waiting. Waiting.
And then chaos. Everyone wanted to get to Andy.
Including me. The stage was about four and a half feet off the ground.
Accessible. I stepped back a few steps, took a little run and threw myself
onto the stage floor. It was when I was lying on that scorching metal,
shins stinging, wind knocked out of me, chin bruised from the hit I had
taken, that I saw Rick Spenser.
There was, and still is, something surreal about that moment: the
famous face looming up out of nowhere. He was pulling himself up the
portable metal staircase that was propped against the back of the truck
bed. His body appeared in stages over the metal floor: head, shoulders
and arms, torso, belly, legs, feet. He seemed huge. He was climbing
those steps as if his life depended on it, and his face was shiny and red
with exertion. The heat on the floor of the stage was unbearable. I could
smell it. I remember thinking, very clearly, a big man like that could die
in this heat, then I turned and scrambled toward Andy. The metal floor
was so hot it burned the palms of my hands.
Over the loudspeaker a woman was saying, “Could a doctor please
come up here?” over and over. Her voice was terrible, forlorn and empty
of hope. As soon as I saw Andy, I knew there wasn’t any point in a
doctor.